Hate Is A Strong Word
by BloodyMarry
Summary: Hate really is a strong word. But Zuko and Sokka find that it's no less powerful a word then love. ZukoxSokka


**Hate Is A Strong Word**

**ZSZS**

Zuko tilted his head back to look up at the moon, it was so bright tonight. The first full moon of the month.

"You know, I see a lot more than any of you," Zuko didn't bother to look to see who the voice belonged to, he knew who it was. The fire bender moved his hands to rest behind his head, and he closed his eyes.

"And I'm blind," the small girl finished. The bright amber eyes of the ex-Prince, opened and turned so that he was looking into her pale milky ones.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked in a lazy sort of manner, it almost sounded rude but there was no real fire behind the words.

"Don't act so stupid," Toph replied with a small huff as she lowered herself in one fluid motion onto the ground to sit beside the other bender. She slid her hands back and rested on her open palms letting the grass and earth slide over her fingers.

She turned her head up to the sky as a small cool breeze swept past her and tickled her warm skin. She gave a sigh and licked her dry lips tiredly, before she uncrossed her legs and let them sprawl out in front of her body.

"What do you want me to say?" Zuko asked in an exhausted manner, as if he'd been keeping something inside him for so long that it almost hurt to give in to it. He looked away from the younger girl beside him, she was so powerful and honestly intimidating, even to him.

She rolled onto her side so that she could face Zuko, she let her head rest on the crook of her elbow and arm and she just stayed like that. She breathed evenly, softly, Zuko would have thought she was asleep had she not had her eyes open.

He was getting uncomfortable, she could tell. She could hear him shift on the earth, moving dirt around, and uprooting small amounts of grass. His fingers were digging around in the soft grass and tugging some out, he was trying to avoid looking at her.

"Admit how you feel about him. Stop lying to yourself," Zuko bit his lip and closed his eyes, he could feel his insides beating against their outer shell, wanting to all jump out of him.

He didn't want to hear this. But as flashes of a familiar tan and scowling face entered his mind he felt shame and fear grip his insides. Anxiety, and guilt even crippled his ability to breath.

"He deserves to know the truth," she said before turning back onto her back and leaving only silence behind her. Zuko didn't know what to say, the surprisingly shrewd and observant girl had left him speechless.

He didn't want to think about what he'd been hiding. About what he'd been trying to forget. But it had been getting harder and harder lately to deny. He hadn't ever felt the things he felt now. He realized though that he hadn't really felt anything before _him_.

**SZSZ**

Zuko sat on the edge of a small cliff picking at one small patch of dirt of front of him, it was separated from the rest of the soft and thick grass behind him and surrounded by dirt and dry clay.

He thought hard about what Toph had said, he needed to find Sokka. He needed to speak to him, tell him something- anything really. He needed to talk to him, get at least some of what he felt out in the open. He was afraid that if he didn't sometime soon he would fall apart, his insides would desert him and he would be left to rot away.

"If you stare at the grass hard enough, do you think it'll burn up?" Zuko's grass pulling hands stilled, all of him shocked that he'd been caught. He ended all his previous thoughts, not wanting them to show on his face. He was a master in repression.

The fire bender didn't lift his head to look up at the person standing over him and blocking his sun, casting a tall shadow over him.

"Antisocial, that's what you are, fire-monkey," Sokka said laughing slightly at his joke, and smiling down at Zuko with his fists resting on his hips like he'd just conquered some great dragon.

But maybe he had.

Something inside Zuko seemed to give up. Why fight what will inevitably happen?

"I hate you; you know that," Zuko said staring now up at Sokka through his long bangs, giving the other male a glimpse at his infamous scar. He left his head tilted down, not wanting to fully stare at Sokka, not wanting to really see him for fear of what he might do.

Sokka seemed to sober, his face fell. He knew it wasn't a question, just a statement, a fact of life. He gave a nod of his head in reply.

Zuko looked back down at his calloused and slightly tanned hands. Not the hands of a Prince any longer. He felt a small, almost indecipherable sigh fall from his slightly parted lips.

The fire wielding Prince felt slightly cooler, but stronger, firmer hands take his in a surprisingly careful grip. He looked up, stunned, expecting to be pulled up into a battle or yanked from the ground and tossed over the cliff, or at least something violent.

Bright blue eyes, so unlike his own were focused solely on his hands. Sokka had pulled them into his own lap after he'd sat down, crossed legged in front of Zuko under the warm morning sun. He had Zuko's hands palms up facing the sun, as his eyes scanned them from wrist to finger tips.

Zuko felt a burning sensation begin to move through him, heating him to the core when the polar warrior ran his fingers over the middle of the exposed palm. His touch was soft, more so than any Zuko had ever received in his seventeen years of life.

"What're-" Zuko began but he was cut short by Sokka's oddly deeper and slightly throatier than usual tone of voice.

"My father always said you could tell a man by his hands," Sokka finally looked up into the marginally wider eyes of Zuko, "They can tell the story of a man's entire life. They've been through everything that he has, and they retain the memories, the scars, the tales of a lifetime."

Sokka licked his lips wetting them for his next words to make an easy exit, "Your hands are rough, scarred," he said but he stopped when he felt Zuko begin to jerk his hands away. But the younger male had a far stronger grip than Zuko had anticipated, and his hands were moved back just the way they were before they had been moved.

Sokka wasn't even looking at Zuko now, leaving the fire nation teen a lot colder, but he didn't resist the hold that Sokka had over him any longer.

Zuko felt shame crawl up his spine and eat away at his stomach. He shouldn't feel the way that he felt for Sokka, for another man, but he did. His father would not hesitate to kill him if he knew. He bit his bottom lip, suddenly nervous at this turn of events.

Sokka, though wasn't deterred by the interruption, "But they're warm, and strong. They're powerful, and dangerous. You've got the hands of a real warrior," Zuko was left speechless once again. He wasn't sure what the other teen was trying to say, but he knew that he had no idea of what he should say.

But the once steady, and now erratic beating of and thumping of his heart against his ribcage demanded that his brain think of words, and that his mouth form them and his lips open to release them. But his breath seemed to escape him; his eyes refused to focus on anything but Sokka's blue, blue eyes; his hearing seemed to fail, the blood pumping furiously through his veins was _so _loud; and his vocal chords seemed to seize up, unable to make even the smallest of sounds. Even thought began to evade him in his search for the right thing to say to Sokka.

He felt those same calloused, but nimble fingers that had moved over his palm lift and brush his bangs out of his face, leaving his eyes and most importantly his scar visible. His past, his shame, his sins were bare in front of Sokka now.

"It was said that my mother always spoke of a person's eyes. She said that they were a clear vision into a person's very soul. The eyes are a piece of the soul, the brightest and most telling part of a person," Zuko's lungs were practically screaming for air, he seemed to be unable to breath, as they like everything else inside him refused to work.

"I like your eyes, Zuko," Sokka said simply. It was the first time Zuko had heard the other male speak his name when he wasn't screaming it in anger or hatred. It sounded like the embodiment of perfection, coming from Sokka's mouth; rolling off his tongue and caressing his lips like the flow of water. He'd never liked his name more than then.

Sokka seemed so impossibly close to him now. They were breathing each other's air, he could even feel Sokka's hair brush against his own skin. And now he could feel Sokka's lips pressed against his own.

His surprised bright eyes were wide, but they closed when he felt Sokka's guiding hands move up his arms, shoulders and then the back of his neck. Sokka pulled him even further into the kiss.

Sokka's mouth gently opened Zuko's and he deepened the kiss as Zuko's own, now extremely warm hands moved to clutch onto the water tribesman's shoulders in a sudden display of his desperate and once hidden need.

Sokka moved his fingers through Zuko's long hair, and he scratched gently at the fire bender's scalp, making him moan into their kiss. Sokka's mouth muffled any sounds that Zuko made and vice-versa, so that their heated collision remained their own and they received no unwelcome visitors from their camp not too far away.

In the back of his clouded mind he realized that he was going to suffocate, breathing through his nose wasn't enough to keep him going. His lungs burned and protested against every opportune breath lost to the kiss.

Zuko slowed the movements of their lips, and pressed against Sokka's broad shoulders. His body seemed to recognize and regain it's own strength again and he ended their kiss, though with some reluctance.

They were both left gasping in air, but it didn't stop them from continuing to get close. Sokka pressed his forehead softly to Zuko's and his nose pushed at Zuko's as he forced air into his abused lungs.

Zuko felt Sokka's body pressed flush against his own, and he realized that they were lying on the ground, and Sokka was on top of him. His legs were spread and the other male rested in between them. The grass around them was soft, and dry but warm and the perfect place for their rendezvous.

He didn't care that they were on the ground, or that the was under another man. All he really wanted was more of what only Sokka could give to him. He wanted more of the heated and burning passion that they shared, the friction that their touching bodies created when pressed so close. He wanted more of Sokka.

He felt the other male's fingers run over and trace the scar on his face, and he closed his eyes, stopping the small staring contest he and Sokka had practically had going on.

"Don't do that," Sokka ordered.

"What?" Zuko replied as he felt the softest of sighs leave Sokka's mouth and touch onto the warm skin of his face.

"I told you that I like your eyes," Sokka answered, his hands didn't stop their movement over Zuko's face. He didn't hate the older teen's scar, he'd always wanted to do this. Zuko forced himself to look back up at Sokka, he tried not to show that he was uncomfortable with the deformed skin of his face. He couldn't see how anyone could stand to see it, much less touch it.

Zuko was rewarded for the opening of his eyes when Sokka leaned forward and he was kissed by the other boy once again. It was a slower kiss, a lazier sort of languorous kiss, but it was not less passionate then their last kiss had been.

But it was short lived, and Sokka soon pulled away.

"Oh, and Zuko," Sokka said between intakes of air, he leaned forward his breath tickling the skin of Zuko's ear, "I hate you too."

Zuko didn't flinch, he even didn't dare look away from Sokka when he pulled back to stare at him. He kept eye contact for as long as he could manage. He lifted a hand and move it to Sokka's own hair to pull at the leather strap holding back the water tribesman's hair.

"I know," Zuko answered as the scenery around them brightened even further as the sun continued to rise high in the sky.

He licked his warm lips before wrapping his hands around Sokka's neck to pull him down into another kiss.

He had told Sokka finally how he felt, and he received the same, and more.

**ZSZS**

**A/N: **Well since the end of Avatar is coming soon, I thought I'd end it the way that I wanted to end it. haha I hope everyone liked it!

_I hope you decide to review!_

-Bloody


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